by Lyga, Barry
Good.
“Come for me,” he whispered, and it began.
CHAPTER 51
Maybe they thought he would attack. Maybe that’s why they were so slow in moving in on him, content to keep their distance. Maybe they were realizing that they couldn’t open fire in their current configuration.
He didn’t plan on allowing them to rearrange themselves.
Raising his arms to the sky, he closed his eyes.
“Get down, you freak! We won’t ask again!”
That was fine by Rose. Something else was already in motion.
The background hum of the Arbor intensified. Rose opened his eyes and looked all around himself. The men in the black body armor were advancing on him with slow, cautious steps.
One of them—just one—stopped for a moment, looking around.
Hey, Rose imagined his muttering, as though to himself, hey, do you guys hear something?
If they didn’t, they would in just a few seconds.
The buzz built in intensity. Behind and above the DeeCees rose a great, fragmented black cloud.
And then a swarm of insects overtook the DeeCees and descended. The DeeCees were swallowed by a wave of buzzing, darting bees, flying cockroaches, and airborne stinging ants.
On their own, the insects couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do much of anything. Rose was counting on the men to panic, because that’s what humans did.
He’d been right to rely on them.
They immediately and predictably freaked out as the bugs swarmed them. If they’d stayed calm, the insects probably would have drifted away as the breeze shredded the cloud of perfume Rose had emitted. But once the men began to jitter and slap at the bugs, the bugs responded. They slipped into the crevice between the neck and the helmet. Yelps and cries of pain rang out as bee stings took hold on sensitive flesh.
The distraction was enough—the stings, the crawling, the bugs under the armor, the mass of them shrouding the air. Rose took advantage of the moment of chaos to whip out vines, snaking them along the ground and wrapping around ankles. He tripped half a dozen DeeCees who were flailing at their helmets before anyone realized what he was up to.
“Subject attacking! Flank him! Flank him!”
One gun went off. The shot went awry amid the hail of insects. Rose concentrated on his skin. He’d never tried this before, but then again, he hadn’t known until recently that he was Rose in more than name.
Some roses were delicate and fragile.
Others were not.
He thickened his skin to an almost bark-like consistency. He took on a woody appearance, his flesh mottling and deepening in color. His sepals, in tatters after the fusillade of bullets from before, grew and filled in, wrapping around him for an additional layer of protection.
Another bullet. This one chipped off an edge of his hip and whined off. He barely felt it.
Someone else did, though: “Man down! Man down!”
Followed by: “Cease fire! No firearms!”
Rose took no pleasure in knowing that their violence had downed one of their own.
Then again, he didn’t regret it, either.
CHAPTER 52
What are they doing down there?” Max Ludo shouted. He grabbed Markard’s arm and practically shoved him through the opening that led to a plunge down to the floor of the arena. “Shoot him already!”
“Magistrate—”
“Shut up, Dimbali! You can grow another one from the corpse! I’m not waiting any longer. Markard! Kill the damn thing!”
“Magistrate…” He extricated himself from Ludo’s clinging grasp. “They can’t fire without risking hitting one another. But don’t worry—these men are well-trained in melee combat. They’ll catch him. We’ve done it before—at the factory, at SecFac.”
Just then, the Magistrate’s comm bleated for attention. As he checked the screen, Max Ludo momentarily forgot his ire, and a wicked smile refolded his features. “Excellent,” he said. “The Truck is here.”
Deedra watched from midway up the tree as Rose stood his ground and fought with the DeeCees. The insects were still buzzing and spinning around, providing a distraction. One DeeCee was down, possibly for good, hit by a ricochet.
The ache in her hip prevented her from going any higher, but the foliage was thick enough that she felt safely concealed. Parting a fan of leaves, she could watch.
Rose didn’t move at all. He just stood there, his skin thick and armored, as the insects choked the air around him and his vines whipped this way and that. Thorned, the tendrils ripped through body armor. The force of his blows lifted the men bodily and tossed them like discarded refuse into the air, arcing high before crashing into the ground or slamming against another tree.
It was quiet and violent and somehow beautiful all at once.
They came at him with bludgeons and blades, raised fists, pepper sprays. But it was like fighting a wall or a building. Rose remained in his spot, feet planted stolidly, and fended off every attack. The formerly pristine blanket of grass was now littered with specks of blood, torn pieces of body armor, discarded weapons.
The DeeCees—as though all bound with a common string—retreated in the face of Rose’s wrath, stumbling back and away, expressions of terror and disbelief evident through the cracks in their riot helmets. They ran or dragged injured comrades between them, and they didn’t look back.
It was over.
Or so she thought.
For just then, there was a rumble that nearly shook her from the tree, and she grabbed a branch and held on for dear life.
At the controls of the Truck, Markard experienced thrill and dread in equal measure. He’d played around with vehicle simulators back in his cadet days, but he’d never actually driven one before. Personal vehicles were outlawed and too expensive to maintain anyway. The power of the roaring engine under his control was intoxicating. He gunned it and crashed through a thicket of shrubbery, casting leaves and branches in all directions.
The dread receded a bit. He’d worried about being able to control the Truck, but it was dead easy—two pedals for stop and go, a wheel for left and right. A child could do it. He hit the gas, and the engine howled in what Markard imagined to be pleasure. His tires cut furrows into the ground as he lurched forward.
The Truck was sturdy and plated with armor, the glass bulletproof. Mounted on the roof were massive speakers, and he hit the button for the PA system now as the boy—Rose—came into view through a patch of crushed bushes.
Deedra watched the mechanical monstrosity tear a dirt-spewing path just below her. It was as if the thing had teeth and had chewed its way through Rose’s beautiful Arbor. There was a curved window at the front of it, and she recognized the DeeCee inspector—Markard—through it.
He passed beneath her, slowly guiding his machine toward Rose. For a moment, she thought he would keep going until he trundled right over poor Rose, crushing him, but he stopped about twenty feet away, right at the edge of the clearing in which Rose stood.
Markard’s voice boomed out from the vehicle:
“Rose! Stand down! You can’t win! You can beat my men, but you can’t beat the machines.”
Deedra’s hip throbbed, but that wasn’t going to stop her. She began to make her way down the tree.
Rose didn’t move except to turn his head in the direction of the voice. It came from a large-wheeled construct that vibrated the ground and spewed forth a noxious gray-white cloud that made Rose want to choke even at a distance.
“Surrender,” the voice went on, “or we’ll use this truck to wipe this place out. This place means something to you, doesn’t it?”
He wasn’t sure if the man in the machine could hear him or not, but he answered anyway: “Every place means something to me. And it’s sad that nowhere means anything to you.”
“Like before—down on the ground. Hands on your head. No one else has to get hurt, and this place can go on.”
Rose clenched his jaw.
Deed
ra eased her way out of the tree, favoring her hip. She was behind the Truck and to the left. She didn’t know if it was possible or not, but she figured she could sneak up along the left side… somehow get that door open… disable Markard…
Her knife rested comfortably against the small of her back. “Disable” him for good, if need be.
She crept forward. The grass was soft, the ground giving and generous to her injured hip.
And then it happened.
A new voice, one Rose knew from broadcasts and his time in prison. This one not amplified, but loud enough to be heard, even over the Truck’s engine:
“Hey! Hey, look what I have!”
Coming around the Truck was Max Ludo. He had one arm wrapped around Deedra’s neck and was prodding her to limp forward. He held a gun to her head.
“It’s simple, Rose!” Ludo called out. “Go back to the lab, or you can watch me turn her head into—”
And Deedra twisted. Something flashed. Her knife. She plunged it into Max Ludo’s thigh, and the Magistrate screamed.
At the same instant, Rose shot a prickled vine in Max’s direction. It hit him in the face at full force and turned Max Ludo’s head into a mass of bloody pulp.
Magistrate Ludo’s body slumped to the ground.
Deedra, relieved, shaking with adrenaline, hopped to one side. Her hip was about to give out; she leaned against a nearby tree.
As she gulped in a huge, relieved breath, the door to the Truck opened and SI Markard tumbled out. He cast a panicked glance at Rose, at Ludo’s body, then back to Rose.
For a long, silent moment, no one moved or spoke. Then Markard, slowly, raised both of his hands above his head. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he called out, his voice quavering.
“You can’t hurt me,” Rose said. Not bragging. Just stating a fact.
“Look, maybe we—”
“You should go,” Rose said very calmly. “You should go now.”
Markard hesitated for just a moment, then glanced over at Max Ludo’s body again…
… and then ran in the opposite direction as fast as he could, disappearing back along the Truck’s path and vanishing through one of the exits from the Arbor.
Deedra closed her eyes and laughed.
It was over.
She thought that for a good five or six seconds.
Rose startled at the sound of the Truck’s engine gunning. He’d seen Markard run off, so what could—
“Rose!” It was Deedra, screaming to him. “Run!”
The Truck lurched forward, then gained steam. Through the windshield, Rose could make out Dr. Dimbali. The man’s expression was twisted into a rage unlike any Rose had ever seen. The rage of a man who has held infinity in his hands and watched it slip through his fingers.
“Run!” she shrieked again, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t run because—
The Truck bore down on him. Rose stood perfectly still. It was close enough now that he could count Dr. Dimbali’s teeth between his peeled-back lips, gritted in determination.
The Truck collided with him, full force. Dead on.
And—
And the entire front end crumpled like cheap foil, the windshield shattering into a million glittering fragments.
Rose didn’t move.
His roots. When the fight began, he’d sworn not to go.
You will not take me! I will not be moved!
And he’d meant it. Here, in the Arbor, in his place of power and peace, he could not lose. He’d sent his roots deeper than ever before, deep into the rich soil he’d cultivated. He’d thickened his skin, made himself like an oak.
The destroyed Truck bore testimony to the strength of not moving. He hadn’t fought back. Not this time. He’d stood his ground and let the world move around him.
And he was alive.
The Truck, sputtering and coughing out its last black clouds of noxious fumes, squealed as a door opened. Dr. Dimbali stumbled out, then collapsed to the ground. He was bleeding profusely.
The man could harm him no more. Rose walked to Dr. Dimbali, who could barely move, barely breathe. The impact had thrown Dr. Dimbali into the steering column, crushing his ribs. His face was a mask of contusions, abrasions, and dozens of gashes from flying glass.
Rose knelt next to him. Despite all Dr. Dimbali had done and planned to do, he felt no anger or hatred toward him. Only sadness. Confusion.
“We were going to do it together,” Rose said. “Like building this place. You didn’t have to try to control me. We could have helped everyone. With my powers and your knowledge, we could have—” He broke off. Rage threatened to overwhelm curiosity, and he tamped it down. “Why, Dr. Dimbali? Why?” He took the dying man’s hand in his own. “You could have helped the entire world, changed the world. But you got greedy. Why? I need to understand.”
Dr. Dimbali coughed. Blood welled up in the corner of his mouth, but he managed a weak smile. “I don’t expect a plant to understand human nature.”
And then he leaned up with obvious pain, reaching out for Rose’s face. Rose put an arm under him, helping him move. Dr. Dimbali touched Rose’s cheek and smiled. Then he leaned in farther and whispered in his ear.
Deedra limped over to where Rose crouched on the ground with Dr. Dimbali, her knife drawn. She didn’t trust Dr. Dimbali, who had his lips close to Rose’s ear. She didn’t trust death at this point. She only trusted Rose.
She needn’t have worried. By the time she made her way over to them, Dr. Dimbali’s body had gone slack and still. Rose gently laid him back on the grass. He didn’t need to tell Deedra that the man was dead.
Standing over the two of them—Dimbali’s eyes unblinking, Rose’s head tilted down over his former mentor—Deedra rode a wave of cresting, incompatible emotions. Dr. Dimbali had tried to enslave Rose and steal something that could have helped the world. But he’d also taught her so much, helped her.
“I don’t know what to feel,” she admitted. “I think I’m glad he’s dead, but…”
“All I wanted was to learn,” Rose said, and the distress in his voice stabbed at her. “I just wanted to learn what I could, then use it to help people. That’s all I wanted. And this is what happens.”
It took a minute, but she managed to work around her hip and get on the ground with him. She put her arms around him.
“None of this is your fault,” she whispered. “And he can’t be the only one who could figure out how to use your powers to make things better. If there’s one person like him, there have to be more. We have to find someone else, someone good, who can really make a difference.”
“And we need to warn people. Warn the world. The Red Rain is coming.”
They sat like that for she knew not how long, just holding each other. She became aware of the silence, then of the nonsilence—the insects, the birds. The rustle of leaves in the breeze.
Had the whole world really been like this, before? Could it be again?
She didn’t know the answer to either question. She only knew this: She would get the answers.
“We should go,” she said. “More people will come. We can’t stay in Ludo Territory. It’s too dangerous. Markard will come back with more DeeCees. The next Magistrate will still want to control you.”
“I know.” He stood and helped pull her to her feet. She took one last look around the Arbor. Its pristine green was now marred by the wreckage wrought by the Truck, the ground abused and furrowed and gouged. Max’s body and his splattered blood and brains. Dr. Dimbali. Shards of plastic and glass and fabric and armor. Dropped weapons. And the great, hulking, smoking wreck of the Truck.
As though the Territory had exploded inside the Arbor.
“It’s not beautiful anymore,” said Deedra. “It’s not perfect.”
Rose touched her cheek, then gently stroked his fingers down to her scar. “They’re not the same thing,” he told her.
As they walked toward the exit, she leaning on him to support her tender hip, she asked, “Wh
at did Dimbali say to you? Right before he died?”
Rose paused, as though deciding. Then he shrugged and touched her scar again, this time to loop his finger under her necklace. He pulled gently, lifting the pendant out from her neckline. The circle with the protruding cross.
“It was about this,” he said.
“This?” She looked down at it. “My pendant?”
“He said… it’s not a pendant. It’s a key.”
“A key?” She lifted it so that it hung between them. “You know the interesting thing about keys?”
“What?”
Her eyes widened and she grinned at Rose. “They can turn things on, but they can also turn things off.” She gestured toward the world beyond the Arbor. “Let’s get out there and see what this one’s good for.”
CHAPTER 53
They made their way out of Ludo Territory as dense clouds the color of old, grease-stained concrete roiled overhead, as though shielding them from the sky’s gaze.
Deedra wondered what color the rain would be when it fell.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank the many, many people who made this book possible: our editor, Alvina Ling, and her crew: Bethany Strout, Nikki Garcia, and Pam Gruber; Annie McDonnell and the entire Managing Editorial team, including copyeditor Tracy Koontz; all of Sales, Publicity, and Marketing, including but not limited to Andrew Smith, Melanie Chang, and Victoria Stapleton; publisher Megan Tingley; and everyone else at Little, Brown, for their faith and their hard work.
Also, of course, we must tip our hats to our agents and managers and sundry other folk without whom we could not survive: Kathy Anderson, Steven Fisher, Barry Littman, and Carlos Carreras.